


Something Akin To Happiness

by imagineagreatadventure



Series: My JB Appreciation Week 2015 Fics [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Jaime/Brienne Appreciation Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 01:31:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4941514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagineagreatadventure/pseuds/imagineagreatadventure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jaime leaves Cersei at her doorstep, thoughts and memories of Brienne crop up. </p><p>JB Week 2015 Day 2: Red</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Akin To Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> Going to be straight up and tell you that I didn't edit this but that's because I'm about to work on actual grad school stuff and wanted to get this out before "red" day ended!
> 
> I also have no idea where this came from honestly.

Her eyes were red and puffy and Jaime had never despised himself more for being the one to make them that way.

“Why?” Cersei asked as he left her. It was raining, a rare thing for King’s Landing and the water had made her normally voluminous golden hair look as stingy as her heart. Her hair was not the only thing of Cersei’s that the rain destroyed — her satin red dress was also ruined.“Why _her?"_  

He heard the unspoken question there. _If you had to pick anyone — why would it be the giant, gawking thing that looked more like an ugly man than an ugly woman._

Jaime looked at his twin, his lover, his friend, and couldn’t say anything. He felt as though he had lost the use of his tongue now that he lost the use of his hand, although Brienne would protest otherwise. She always grew red in anger and arousal when he turned his words on her, calling her all sorts of mocking things that would only raise her heat and embarrassment and even the loss of his hand did not bother her because she knew why he lost it. Brienne was the cause after all. He lost it to save her life. 

He could have left her in the car that day, she would have been trapped underwater but he could have left, but not even his hard, cruel heart could abandon the woman who drove him mad to watery depths and so he reached out and got her, managing to get his own hand stuck in the car door in the process, almost drowning in fear and panic until the wench knocked him out. The next thing he knew he was awake in a hospital bed without his right hand, a deep red soaking the bandages that covered his stump. 

He had hated her more on that day, hated her more than he thought it was possible to hate a person, almost more than Aerys Targaryen, but she was the only one who visited more than once. Not even Tyrion came very often, tangled up in some court case dispute with their father. Their father was similar, visiting four or five times over the course of weeks. Jaime didn't miss him.

Cersei only visited twice to Jaime’s knowledge. And she had been horrified by the loss of his hand the first, although she pressed her lips against his as though it was otherwise. But he saw the quiet sneer on her red lips.

The second time was the worst visit of them all. Brienne had been with him and she brought a board game with her, some silly mystery game. Jaime had been very close to winning with Miss Scarlet when Cersei came in, all merciless rage and ragged wind, looking more livid than Jaime had ever seen her.

“What is she doing here? Isn’t she the one who did this to you?” Her eyes were fire and Jaime remembered Aerys. 

Rage sustains itself, Jaime had learned from his time in the fire department, watching Aerys become more and more corrupt. Fire eats away at everything until nothing is left at all. 

“She’s my friend,” Jaime had told Cersei as coolly as he could, trying to be like their father as he did so. Tywin would have never let Cersei address him in such a state or at least not for very long.

Brienne looked abashed and nervous when Cersei came in, looking very much like she wanted to flee, but instead she spoke. _Like the brave, stupid wench she was_. “It was his hand or his life.”

“You mean it was his hand or your life,” Cersei had snapped back, examining her nails as if she was debating about drawing blood. Jaime would have almost liked to see Cersei try. Brienne would have had Cersei on her ass in minutes. “He went back to save you.”

“It was the drunk driver who hit us that's at fault,” Jaime said, just to end it. “Now will you calm down? You could play this stupid game with us.”

Brienne looked terrified of that prospect and Jaime couldn’t blame her, but he knew his sister would not be interested in a board game. And he was right. Cersei left with a glare and only came to him a week after he finally left the hospital.

She was always the one who left. But now it was his turn. 

“Why her?” Cersei asked again at the doorstep as he tried to leave. She pulled at his raincoat, her red nails looking more like claws and he stopped to look at her in the eyes. Her eyes had once been emeralds to him and now they held nothing but his reflection.

And so he smiled, ignoring the spattering of rain on his jacket, unable to think of anything else but the truth to say. “I dreamed of her.”

Cersei looked simultaneously enraged and confused, the expression endearing enough to make Jaime laugh outright.

She did not like that. 

When the red door was slammed in his face ( _I painted that on a warm summer day, three weeks after you married Robert, you wanted to remember who you were and so I did it—you kissed me_ ), Jaime left, his small suitcase in hand. 

He had nearly nothing in the suitcase, most of his stuff was at his own apartment, but there were enough random items at Cersei’s (and Robert’s) apartment that he felt that it would be best to find them now rather than later.

As he surmised that he probably would not see Cersei any time soon. 

It truly had been Tyrion’s fault that he had left Cersei — not Brienne’s but Jaime had no wish to make Cersei hate Tyrion more, not that he wanted his sister to hate Brienne either. But it was Tyrion who told the truth of Cersei’s infidelity. Jaime could handle Robert… _barely_ … and once she was in the midst of divorcing the womanizing drunkard, Jaime thought, for a wonderful, wild moment, that she could be his alone again, like the days of their childhood.

Tyrion had brought that dream to a bloody end. 

She had cheated on him with more than just fucking Robert. Somehow, Cersei had become the husband she disdained. Did living with someone make you become more like them?

Jaime almost hoped so. He hoped to become more like Brienne, more good and honorable and wonderful. Although he had to wonder if Brienne would want to become more like him. 

_There’s no one like me_ he told her that night in the hospital when he berated her over and over again for the loss of his hand, crying from the fever and rage. She had tried ringing for the nurse but he cursed at her until he spilled out it all. Treating her more like a therapist than a reluctant acquaintance he got saddled with because he decided to harass the woman who worked in the same building as him. She a lowly freelance consultant, flitting from business to business, and he a fucking executive for his Father, truly doing nothing but staring out the window and pretending to read emails and memos. Tyrion did all the _real_ work and Jaime just wished he was out on the street — doing something worthwhile. 

Fighting the red hot fires and the people who started them. Like Aerys. 

_ Maybe even like Cersei._

But he couldn’t do that now with his hand gone, he couldn't revel in his daydreams of heroism. For so long he blamed Brienne for this loss, cursing her name in the mornings and before he slept, but she somehow broke through that, reminding him that he was more than a hand. Somehow telling her all his sins awoke a sense of justice in her as well as a sense of mercy for she no longer treated him like something fragile that she had to protect, but someone who needed a desperate wake up call. And so she became his blaring alarm, visiting him more often than his own damned doctor, some foolish man that Tywin had bought off. Reminding him to take his pain medication, warning him not to take too much, talking to the physical therapists — it had been at the point that nearly the entire hospital staff assumed she was his girlfriend or his wife.

Jaime enjoyed seeing Brienne’s reaction to that, her entire face red and flaming like a fire hydrant. Jaime never contested it, loving the look on her face, and wondering if her entire body was red and pink - if the blush reached her breasts, but Brienne always demurred, as though she thought the idea of them together was insane. But doctors and nurses and physical therapists did not care about the looks of their patients and their patients’ families, they cared about who was there dealing with the particulars and that person was _Brienne_.

Soon enough she was not only present during the day, but at night as well, in Jaime’s dreams. Even after he left the hospital, she plagued him, checking up on him like the way a mother almost would, or perhaps the way a friend could. Addam Marbrand was Jaime’s only real friend outside the family and Addam had his own life — his own friends — and also lived on the other side of the country, dealing with his own problems. 

Brienne became his best friend and confidant and it was only after a night alone drinking arbor red after a terrible argument with Cersei that Jaime realized that he wanted Brienne to be his lover too. 

She had not been easy to convince of this. Jaime had to worm himself into her heart, the way she wormed herself into his. He was fairly sure he was already present there when he decided to woo her, but he also knew of her troubles with men and had realized that this would be much more difficult than winning over Cersei.

_ (Especially since he and Cersei had been children when they had started acting like adults. And Jaime was fairly sure that the whole thing had been Cersei’s idea anyways.)_

But he did find his way there into her stubborn heart or at least he thought so because when he kissed her, she kissed him back. Timidly, nervously, but there was a smile too, he could feel it as much as he could feel his own spreading across his face until they both laughed, feeling something akin to happiness.

It was just _fun_ being with Brienne. 

He had resolved on that day to end it with Cersei for good then. He didn’t even want to mention Brienne’s name, too afraid of Cersei unleashing her wrath, but could not help it once the arguing started. Cersei had laughed until she realized it was not a joke and then she cried with rage (and a not very small part of Jaime hoped it was also sadness causing her tears). 

Jaime still wished that he had not caused his sister pain, but she had caused so much to his own heart that he couldn’t fully regret it. Especially since it meant that Brienne would be waiting for him at home. 

When he came in through the door of his own apartment (the door bluer than Brienne’s eyes) wrestling his raincoat and suitcase off his shoulders, Brienne glared at the puddles he created. 

“How are you still soaking wet after wearing a raincoat?” she complained with a frown, pushing aside the magazine she had been reading. “It’s as if you brought the storm inside.”

Jaime only smiled brightly, knowing how her face would turn red if he did it just the _right_ way. He was rewarded for it. 

“Stop it,” she snapped, her blush cooling as he drew closer to her. “I set up Clue while you were out."

“Can I be Miss Scarlet?” Jaime asked, leaning into her space. Jaime could not match her height but he did know how much she liked that he could look into her eyes. 

“You’re always Miss Scarlet,” Brienne pointed out, her lips twitching in that way that meant she was hiding a smile, her eyes bright and clear and blue. 

Jaime wanted to kiss her. 

So he did.


End file.
